Wyoming Woman Claims $74,505 Dakota Cash Jackpot

For Immediate Release: 11/27/2013

PIERRE, S.D. – Denise Spelts of Gillette, WY has 74,505 new reasons to be thankful this Thanksgiving. Spelts on November 27, 2013 claimed her $74,505 Dakota Cash jackpot from the November 23, 2013 drawing.

Spelts purchased her winning ticket at Minitman Food and Fuel on Colorado Boulevard in Spearfish. The store will receive a $3,725 bonus for the sale.

A Human Resources manager for a Wyoming heavy equipment company, Spelts regularly plays all of South Dakota’s lotto games as well as scratch tickets, purchasing her tickets in Rapid City and Spearfish. She checks her numbers on the Lottery’s website after the drawings, which is how she discovered Sunday that she was a jackpot winner.

“I went out to lottery.sd.gov Sunday morning like I usually do and saw that I had all the numbers for Dakota Cash. I told Marty (Brown, her significant other) that I had the winning ticket. So he took the ticket and looked at the numbers, too, just to make sure,” Spelts said.

The couple shared the good news with their son and two granddaughters and already began planning on Sunday how they would use the winnings.

“For now, we’re putting it in the bank. But we’re planning on buying some land in South Dakota in the future so the money will help with that,” said Spelts.

The new jackpot winner offers some advice to other players waiting to take home the big prize. “You have to play and play smart,” she said.

Dakota Cash is played and won only in South Dakota; the odds of winning the game’s jackpot are 1:324,632. The jackpot currently sits at $20,000 for the next drawing on Wednesday, November 27, 2013.

The South Dakota Lottery is a division
of the South Dakota Department of Revenue. You must be 18 years or older to play Scratch and Lotto games. You must
be 21 years or older to play Video Lottery. Please play responsibly. Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the
winning numbers and prize payouts. The Lottery reserves the right to correct errors. In the event of a discrepancy the official and
certified files maintained by the South Dakota Lottery shall prevail.